Bryn Mawr Classical Review 94.02.02

Reviewed by Ian G. Tompkins, Board of
Classical Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

The Historia Apostolica, a verse commentary on the Acts of the
Apostles composed by the sub-deacon Arator and first published in Rome in
544, was a popular text in mediaeval Europe, as the complex manuscript
tradition attests. However, when reviewing McKinlay's edition of the text
in 1954, M.L.W. Laistner commented acerbically that it was "not a poem
likely to find many readers today" (AJP 75, 210). This harsh
criticism has been refuted by the appearance in recent years of an English
translation by R.J. Schrader in 1987, and of several articles and studies,
to which may now be added a monograph by Richard Hillier published by the
Clarendon Press, which is based on the author's Durham University doctoral
thesis. H. is concerned with a number of passages in the HA which
exemplify Arator's interest in baptismal imagery. His central thesis is
that Arator's emphasis on baptism goes beyond the confines of the text of
Acts, for baptismal interpretations are frequently introduced which are
not
obviously justified by the biblical text. H.'s thesis is well presented,
and he has certainly made a good case for this important characteristic of
Arator's exegesis.

H.'s study begins with two general chapters in
which he first sets the publication of the Historia Apostolica in
its historical context (1-19), and then provides a general survey of
Arator's interest in the themes and imagery of baptism (20-52).
The following six chapters are concerned with the analysis of seven
sections of the HA where this interest is manifest. H. discusses
the sense of each passage, and explores the history of the exegesis of
these themes and images in earlier Christian writers. Thus, in chapter 4,
Arator's commentary on the story of Simon Magus is set against the context
of earlier discussions of this passage such as John Chrysostom,
Catech. 5.21 (76), Jerome, Altercatio Luciferani et
Orthodoxi 22 (77-78); and Augustine, In Evangelium Ioannis
Tractatus 6 (76, 81-82, 85-86, 89). Perhaps the most interesting
discussion is found in chapter 8, in which H. identifies a possible link
between Arator's image of the aged eagle that gazes into the sun,
absorbing its renewing heat, and then casts off its old age in a pool (2,
28-46), and the account of the eagle in the Physiologus Latinus 8.
H.
suggests that Arator is the only writer of late antiquity to show
knowledge of the story of the eagle as told in the Physiologus, for
Augustine, Cassiodorus, Dracontius, and Prosper record a different
tradition in which attention focuses on the growth of the eagle's beak
which causes the bird to starve (187-188), while Ambrose, although he
interprets the image of the renewed eagle in baptismal terms, "was
unaware of the Physiologus account, or ... chose to ignore it"
(192).
On the Physiologus, see M. Wellmann, "Der Physiologos: Eine
religionsgeschichtlich naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung", Philologus
Supplementband 22.1 (1930), 1ff, B.E. Perry, PW 20.1
(1941), 1074-1129, and P. Cox, "The Physiologus: a poiesis of nature",
Church History 52 (1983), 433-443.

In his critical edition
of
the text, A.P. McKinlay provided a full critical apparatus which included
a
vast number of parallels in other Christian and pagan writers, and since
his work, there has been some discussion regarding the poem's sources.
Arator
has usually been considered within the context of Christian Latin poets,
such as Juvencus, Dracontius, and the Paschale Carmen of Sedulius.
See in particular, J. McClure, "The biblical epic and its audience in late
antiquity", Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar Third Volume,
ed. F. Cairns, ARCA 7, Liverpool, 1981, 305-322 (which H. does not
include in his bibliography), M. Roberts, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical
Paraphrase in Late Antiquity, ARCA 16, Liverpool, 1985, and N. Wright,
Eranos 87 (1989), 51-64 (Wright finds 7 certain parallels between
Sedulius and Arator, 9 possible allusions, and 26 possible echoes).

The chief significance of H.'s study is that Arator is now placed
within the context of major theological writers, particularly Augustine
and Ambrose, rather than poets such as Sedulius. Thus, the Index Locorum
includes eighty-three references to Ambrose, and sixty-two to Augustine,
but only one to Juvencus, two to Dracontius, and six to Sedulius. In
several chapters, H. identifies works of Ambrose and Augustine as the
clear source for Arator's ideas. Thus, Arator's treatment of the account
of the ascension in Acts 1 shows "a clear debt" to Ambrose, De
Fide 4.1.6-10 (58), but the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia are
also
a possible influence (67). As we have seen, Augustine's writing on John
"without doubt is the source of Arator's exposition" of the story of Simon
Magus (76, cf. 82, and 85: "Again the influence of Augustine is evident"),
while he is here also possibly influenced by Sedulius, Pasch. Carm.
1, 171-2 (80), and by Augustine's C. Faustum
12.20 (82), and Enarr. in Ps. 130.2 (86: "beyond doubt"). Arator's
account of the healing of the paralytic of Acts 9: 32-35 draws on
Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 83.2 (137: "Arator's dependence on
Augustine is clear"). However, in contrast, H. discusses at length the
exegetical traditions concerning the Ethiopian eunuch and the Ethiopians
in general (92-121), but no source for Arator's ideas is here clearly
identified, while aspects of Arator's account of the Jerusalem council of
Acts 15 show similarities to passages of Theodoret and a Jewish
interpretation rejected by Jerome (146-147), although this line of
argument is not developed by H. Other aspects of this section of Arator's
narrative clearly draw on Gregory of Elvira (150). Sedulius is grudgingly
admitted as
Arator's source for a minor aspect of his exposition of the crossing of
the Red Sea at 2, 40-95 (179), while Prudentius is another possible source
(161, n.20), although in the rest of this chapter, no other particular
sources are identified (151-179). After such claims concerning Arator's
theological sources, H.'s conclusions are strangely tentative. The
possible importance of oral and liturgical traditions is briefly raised
(194-195). Similarities to works of Augustine and Ambrose "would seem to
argue more than merely casual acquaintance" (195). A discussion of whether
Arator may have known Greek is appended as an afterthought (196), while H.
then disowns "the quest for Quellenforschung" (197). These somewhat
ambivalent conclusions do not sit easily with the more confident
assertions of the earlier chapters. H.'s identification of the theological
sources for Arator's writing would have been helped if these findings had
been set within the wider context of the influence of Augustine and
Ambrose upon other Christian Latin writers of the fifth and sixth
centuries. It would, for instance, be interesting to know whether Sedulius
was as influenced by Augustine as Arator appears to be.